The Internet has fostered the growth of many new forms of communication. One of the most popular forms of communication is the so-called discussion board. A discussion board provides an online forum that allows users to view messages posted by other users and to respond to selected messages. A discussion board will commonly cater to a specific theme, which may be relatively broad or quite narrow. For instance, discussion boards have been created to discuss politics, child care, music, television shows, technical matters, products of various kinds, and so on.
FIGS. 1 and 2 show two well-known paradigms for organizing messages in a discussion board. Beginning with FIG. 1, this figure shows a presentation 100 that organizes messages using a so-called “flat” listing paradigm. Namely, this presentation 100 shows an exemplary seven messages (102-114) arranged in chronological order based on the times that the respective messages (102-114) were posted. That is, message 102 was posted first, followed by message 104, followed by message 106, and so on. Each message includes a message portion that identifies the text of the message. For instance, the first message 102 includes a message portion 116. Each message can also include a metadata portion which conveys salient information pertaining to the message. For instance, the first message includes a metadata portion 118 that identifies the user who posted the message 102, as well as the date and time at which the user posted the message. In the exemplary case of FIG. 1, the overall discussion is directed to a literature-related theme; namely, the discussion focuses on the New York Times list of best-selling books, as identified by theme caption 120.
The flat method of organizing messages has merit in that the user can quickly grasp the chronological flow of the conversation by scanning the discussion from top to bottom. For example, the last posting in the discussion identifies the most recent comment. However, this paradigm is not without its drawbacks. For example, a user may scan the chronological list of messages and choose to reply to a posting that is not the most recent posting. This may be problematic because it may generate a thematic discontinuity in the thread of messages. Consider, for example, the case in FIG. 1 in which the general topic pertains to a book written by a hypothetical author, John Smith. The first four messages (102-108) develop in a rather logical progression, with each user replying to an immediately preceding posting. However, the discussion becomes disjointed thereafter, with subsequent users choosing to reply to earlier messages in the sequence. Indeed, for example, the last user posts a message (i.e., message 114) that responds to a rather off-topic theme in response to a message (i.e., message 108) in the middle the sequence. This creates potential confusion, as a casual glance at the sequence does not immediately reveal the nexus between the last message and the other messages in the sequence.
FIG. 2 shows a presentation 200 that organizes messages using a so-called “nested” listing paradigm. Namely, this presentation 200 illustrates the same exemplary seven messages (102-114) as shown in FIG. 1, but arranges these messages in a manner which more clearly illustrates the nexus among messages. More specifically, in the nested paradigm, a message that is in reply to an earlier message is indented beneath that earlier message. For example, message 104 is in response to message 102, and is therefore indented beneath message 102. Message 106 is in response to message 104, and is therefore indented under message 104, and so on. This strategy overcomes the difficulty in the flat paradigm of FIG. 1, because it more clearly conveys the logical progression of messages. For example, the off-topic message 114 posted by the last user is now positioned directly beneath the message 108 it is in reply to, eliminating the confusion in the flat paradigm as to why this seemingly aberrant message was posted in the context of a discussion regarding a book.
Nevertheless, the nested paradigm is not without its own drawbacks. To better convey the relationships among messages, the nested view potentially presents messages out of chronological order. The thread of messages may therefore not readily convey a general sense of the chronological flow of the conversation, or easily convey earliest or most recent messages posted. Moreover, a thread that is highly nested may include many levels of indentations. This may create a difficult and unpleasant reading experience. Further, in practice the user may have difficulty visually tracing the indented layout to determine or following the relationship among messages.
Other alternative user interface paradigms have been proposed. However, these paradigms are also not fully satisfactory for one or more reasons.
For at least the above-identified reasons, there is a need for more satisfactory strategies for presenting messages to users.